


The Grasslands are Another Kind of Ocean

by letmetellyouaboutmyfeels



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Holy Crap I Wrote Something G Rated, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Personal Favorite, Sarah Plain and Tall AU, Tumblr Prompt, Unbearably Soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:35:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23087863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letmetellyouaboutmyfeels/pseuds/letmetellyouaboutmyfeels
Summary: Looking for a new start, Lucy Preston goes to the prairie.
Relationships: Garcia Flynn/Lucy Preston
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	The Grasslands are Another Kind of Ocean

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted here: https://letmetellyouaboutmyfeels.tumblr.com/post/184050678738/prompt-xe-first-saw-xem-sitting-on-the-steps

Lucy first saw Flynn sitting on the steps, patiently weaving intricate patterns into the hair of the child on his lap—Iris, she would later learn.

She’d been in desperate need of a job and when she’d seen the advertisement for a housekeeper and a babysitter at one of the ranches, she’d signed up. It was supposed to be temporary, just until she could save up enough money to go back home to New England, to the ocean, to Amy.

But then she’d seen Flynn, patiently doing up his daughter’s hair, and something in her had launched itself towards him like an arrow seeking a mark.

Flynn was stubborn, cranky, brusk, and tended to say the opposite of what he’d intended, and the first month they’d clashed so many times Lucy had nearly packed up and left. But Iris needed a mother, and Lucy couldn’t leave her, with her big brown eyes and soft sweet smile and the way she would crawl into Lucy’s arms at night when she’d had a nightmare and how she would weave flower crowns and insist on Lucy wearing them.

Over time, though, Flynn softened. He told her, haltingly, how he’d come from across the sea and how nobody treated him kindly except for Lorena, who saw past his broken English to the intelligence that lay beneath. He could recite Shakespeare from memory, and would act it out for Iris with little handmade puppets, making her gasp and laugh and shriek. He would help Lucy make dinner, and mended Lucy’s shoes, and she’d watch his hands and fingers and try to ignore the heat circling in her gut.

Most everyone else assumed Lucy was a mail-order bride and treated her accordingly. She’d long given up on trying to correct them. Never mind that she and Flynn slept in separate beds and had from the beginning and that there was no ring on her finger. It didn’t matter to her. Flynn was nothing like most of the other ranchers, deferring to her and practically bowing as he held the door open for her, soft spoken and showing affection more through silent gestures than anything else. He noticed when she was cold and would wrap a blanket around her shoulders, and bought her a journal and new colored pencils when hers ran out, and the more things he did and the longer Lucy stayed the more she realized that she couldn’t leave.

She simply couldn’t.

So she wrote to Amy, and told her what was what, and received to her surprise a letter in return, detailing that if Lucy wasn’t going to come back home where it was all prissy blue-bloods anyway that Amy might as well join her and to expect her on the September 16th train.

Well, Amy had always been one for acting before thinking.

Not even knowing what to tell Flynn, Lucy set out to pick her wayward sister up from the station to bring her home and explain to Flynn that apparently Amy had decided to move in with them, and what were they going to do about that?

Amy was ecstatic to see her, asking all about this Flynn, and what he was like, and when should they put the banns up, no matter how often Lucy reminded her that Flynn didn’t think of her that way.

When they got back to the house, she saw Flynn on the steps, braiding Iris’s hair, same as when she’d first seen him.

“Lucy!” Iris crowed, leaping to her feet and running to them.

Lucy hugged her. She was still quite small, obviously not inheriting her father’s height.

“You’re back,” Iris whispered. “Papa was worried.”

“Worried?”

“He said maybe you’d gone back to the sea. Because you miss it.”

Lucy looked up, astonished, to see Flynn staring at her with this—this terror-filled ache, this longing, that she didn’t think she’d ever seen before. On anyone.

“Well I couldn’t go back to the sea,” Lucy said, answering Iris but staring at Flynn, knowing he could hear her, drowning in his gaze. “My home’s here, isn’t it?”

The look on Flynn’s face stole her breath, and she felt the rest of her flying over to join the piece that had attached itself to him from the start.

(Later, that night, there were murmured talks of how Amy would move into Lucy’s old bed, and soft words uttered, and kisses and more exchanged, and Lucy slept with Flynn’s heartbeat under her ear, steady as the crashing of waves on the shore.)


End file.
